Just started reading through the playtest doc and see that half-elves and half-orcs as we knew them seem to be gone, there is no-longer a specific racial entry for either. Instead you can now decide that your parents were any humanoid combo, and there is no benefit to this beyond choosing which parent's racial options you get, and then you can just "mix and match" aesthetics from both races to decide how you look.

So a "Half'Elf" is not an elf combined with any other humanoid race. You can choose to be half-elf and half-halfling. If you choose that you decide which parent grants you racial benefits. So you can say you are half-elf and half-halfling, and decide you get the benefits of being an elf, and... what? Your size and speed are determined by the parent you chose for your benefits? What's the point?

"I know I look like a goblin, but I'm actually half-orc and half-gnome."

This is just stupid.

CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT HUMANOID KINDS
Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible. If you’d like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents. Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics—color, ear shape, and the like—of the two options. For example, if your character has a halfling and a gnome parent, you might choose Halfling for your game traits and then decide that your character has the pointed ears that are characteristic of a gnome. Finally, determine the average of the two options’ Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live. For example, a child of a halfling and a gnome has an average life span of 288 years.

I like the new approach. Half-Elf stats made no real sense, in the PHB, much too powerful in my opinion. Now, it is much more flexible.

yeah, tons more versatility than just "half-elf"  now you may see different variations of similar half-races.  it's a cool concept.

Quote from OctoberGeek >>

Just started reading through the playtest doc and see that half-elves and half-orcs as we knew them seem to be gone, there is no-longer a specific racial entry for either. Instead you can now decide that your parents were any humanoid combo, and there is no benefit to this beyond choosing which parent's racial options you get, and then you can just "mix and match" aesthetics from both races to decide how you look.

So a "Half'Elf" is not an elf combined with any other humanoid race. You can choose to be half-elf and half-halfling. If you choose that you decide which parent grants you racial benefits. So you can say you are half-elf and half-halfling, and decide you get the benefits of being an elf, and... what? Your size and speed are determined by the parent you chose for your benefits? What's the point?

"I know I look like a goblin, but I'm actually half-orc and half-gnome."

This is just stupid.

CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT HUMANOID KINDS
Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible. If you’d like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents. Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics—color, ear shape, and the like—of the two options. For example, if your character has a halfling and a gnome parent, you might choose Halfling for your game traits and then decide that your character has the pointed ears that are characteristic of a gnome. Finally, determine the average of the two options’ Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live. For example, a child of a halfling and a gnome has an average life span of 288 years.

This is pretty much what I've been doing in my homebrew campaign for the last couple years

What was stupid was having two specific combinations that gave you special powers

My human-sized halfling-looking half-halfling, half-human is going to be cool.

Yep.  Helvs and horcs no longer get their own unique Supah Special statblocks.  You pick a core species, then use the drastically expanded customization in things like Background to reflect having a mixed parentage if that mixed parentage actually matters.  Or you lightly homebrew a base species, swap one trait for another, to get the feel of a mixed-breed.  Since 2024 D&D RED orcs have the important traits from half-orcs anyways, the idea would be to simply play an orc with lighter skin, a slimmer* frame, and more hair and go from there.  Half-elves are harder, but the introduction of background feats makes it easier to get back what half-elves 'lost' anyways.

I can think of two or three different ways off the top of my head to replicate the abilities of 'classic' helves and horcs using the new system.  Orc block with Savage Attacker gets you basically all the half-orc stuff; half-elves are as easy as adding Skilled or any of the other artisan stuff to the elf block, since half-elves are known for having more stats than other people, a couple of fancy minor elf doodads, and extra proficiencies.  Boom.  Done.  And hey - they put age and size ranges back into the PHB critters, the way everybody wanted.

I don't really see anything but nitpickery to get super upset about in the playtest doc, at least insofar as species/origin goes.

I'd prefer a mixing of stats but that can be tricky to do in a balanced way that doesn't wind up constraining what you can do with races. At the very least, I don't see a problem using size of one, special traits of another, for example. Otherwise, I really, really like the idea of removing half-elves & half-orcs and just letting players combine any two humanoids.

I honestly liked it.  One of the things pepople had a legit gripe is that every setting had its own half elf variant. Now its just "Do what you want, but your background matters more than your lineage"

Sounds cool to me! Positive change!!!

Quote from OctoberGeek >>

"I know I look like a goblin, but I'm actually half-orc and half-gnome."

This is just stupid.

If someone at the table had a character like this, I'd think it was kind of an awesome description. Tons of rp potential! 

Or much like everyone else who still plays 3.5e.... if you hate it and don't want to use it.... don't?

I love the openness of picking your halves so I am all for this element.

That said, I do think there should be a way to combine both DNA sources such as if one race has a walking speed of 30 and another 20 then you would be 25ft as an example. One has Darkvision at 60 and the other 120 - you get 90ft. You pick a race trait from each side...I know this most of all could lead to power gaming but power gamers are going to power game so I honestly just ignore them.

I can see the "dominate gene" thing they're trying to do here by saying you have to pick one race as the mechanical side for your half race character, but to have a true mix I'd rather see a way to build from them both myself. Yeah they give you the looks side of being able to mix like a kid would be, but some kids also strongly take after one parent so you could have a PC still who looks like an elf in every sense but genetically they're half elf and half dwarf or something. Aesthetics isn't enough for me to say I'm a true half race PC, but that's me.

Again let me have some way to build a true half race with the penalities to not being a full breed of something; a reduced walking speed, a reduced Darkvision (if the other race has no Darkvision then half the one parents vision - ex: 60ft becomes 30ft for you), and mixed racial features to represent both sides. Maybe you have Relentless Endurance from an orc but you can't have Powerful Build also. If you are of two races let's see that in the PC!

I will agree that you can say you're half A and half B all you want but mechanically you play as A or B which is the same mechanically as picking A or B from the start; the whole point of playing a mixed race PC is to combine elements of both into your PC to create the truest you.

As others have said, thankfully you can ignore the official format and play this way if it's how your DM allows. D&D is becoming more and more customizable as this recent presentation shows and even before now the rulebook itself calls itself a guide line more than rule so if you want to scrap the UA/official content then do it! 🙂 I certainly will...I'm doing it for the floating ASIs also because it makes no sense to me why you can't have one +3 to a stat if you can break up the +2 and do three +1s; it's all about the roll and as long as you don't go over 20 at the start how is any different than rolling a 19 pre-additions and dropping a +1 to get the 20 that way or doing an 18 and adding the +2.

I'm very pro-customization and so again I like some of what was pitched, but I do disagree on this build format. There needs to be a way to really half up features from two races! I know there's a book on DMsGuild that works on how to do this in a more balanced fashion so hopefully Wizards will look at that because I get again what they're trying to do here thematically, but the execution fails to the point I'll do it my own way for best results.

I've always been drawn to the Half Elf lore, personally, but I also like this change.

I like it.

Really, half-elves and -orcs are kind of weird once you think through the implications. (Ignore real-world biology, of course, because magic.)

So, humans are cross-fertile with elves and orcs. Why those two? Does it mean they're really human? Are elves and orcs cross-fertile?

What about other species, specifically tieflings, who are explicitly human-derived? I'm in two games where a player decided they wanted to play half-elf, half-tiefling.

Once you have them, you need a generic cross-breeding mechanic. This one has the advantage of simplicity.

Meh. Half-orcs lose savage attacks, but gain temporary hit points. I do not see this as a great loss or bad trade. From an extra pop 5% of the time to consistently harder to kill just about always. Sounds great to me.

I am 100% ignoring 6e, One D&D or whatever they want to call it.  I do not like this new direction.

Does anyone know if there's anything like a Poll or other voting type of system currently up, either in relation to the most recent books or the next edition?  I'm betting that there isn't or that it's been closed but I have to ask.  I'm pretty sure my only other option is to be yet another dick on Twitter, and use my (lack of) money.  Thanks in advance.  I understand others seem to be all in on this so good luck to you if it takes off, but I personally hope it burns down faster than 4e.

It says on the playtest page that the feedback form for this first UA will open September 2nd so that people actually test it first.

And on that note, please actually playtest it first before giving feedback. There is a massive difference between "I don't like how this sounds" and "I don't like the effect this has on the game". There are several things that have my eyebrows raised, but it's important to play them first so that we know how it affects the game - which can surprise us. 

If you still hate them...then on 2nd September, tear them a new one, be my guest. Just make sure the feedback is based on experience than "It's not what I thought of".

Hmmmm.  I don't necessarily mind the mechanics of this, but I don't really appreciate what it means lorewise.  This feels like another step the 5e dev team is taking in the direction of considering the fantasy creatures as different skins of a single species rather than a collection of distinct species. 

What made Half-Elves and Half-Orcs unique is that they did not necessarily actually have to be a product of one parent of two races, but rather could have parents, grandparents and great-grandparents etc. who were also half-elves and half-orcs.  Those blends created a true-breeding race (read as species), that unlike mules, etc. are fertile/viable amongst themselves; whereas most other creatures couldn't actually do that.  They may be able to provide 1 generation of a mixed species, but not really ones that were reproductively viable amongst themselves.

I'm not sure how many creatures were initially really able to crossbreed in the first place.  I think humans were able to breed with anyone and orcs were able to breed with anyone and polymorphed dragons were, and also manifested fiends.  I don't really remember too many other examples from the 'good ol' days' of folk that could breed with other folk.